A pneumatic hand truck that helps delivery drivers load heavy items in and out of a truck and stay safe
This project is currently under-way.
Overview: Myself and three team-members, Gina Donlin, Ariel Duncan and Letty Limbach won the Shobe Startup prize in March 2015 which awarded us $5k to work toward launching a startup. The idea we pitched is a pneumatic (air-powered) hand truck to help delivery drivers load heavy items in and out of trucks. This idea came originally from Gina's dad, who had worked at a battery company and seen people have to lift heavy 125 lb batteries by themselves. He already had a patent and an initial prototype. We came in to provide a better understanding of our users, test & iterate on the prototype, and provide a new design suggestion. The main goal of the device is to be lighter, cheaper and faster than those currently on the market.
My role: I'll be working on the interaction design, as well as the building of the next prototype using my Mechanical Engineering background.
Process: We're currently finishing up our initial user research, and will soon be moving onto our design phase. From there, we'll do a round (or likely several) of usability tests, and lastly determine our design suggestions.
Results (current and planned): So far a major finding has been that this device needs to make the driver's process more efficient -- if it costs him or her time on the route, then it is likely to not be used. Our final goal is to have design suggestions for the next product iteration.
Date: Spring/Summer 2015
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